The British Army is training UAF soldiers and some British specialists are in Ukraine itself, indicating the UK’s “significant” involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. About it in an interview with RTVI declared Russian Ambassador to Britain Andrey Kelin. According to him, it would be “exaggerated” to speak of an imminent direct participation of the armed forces of the kingdom in the hostilities in Ukraine, but “nothing can be ruled out for the future”.
Commenting on the words of British MPs and the military about the need to prepare for an active confrontation with Russia, Andrey Kelin linked these statements to two factors. First, according to the Russian diplomat, it creates the conditions for increasing defense spending in the country. According to Kaelin, in recent decades, “the British armed forces have largely deteriorated”, which is recognized, in particular by NATO and the United States. “The British army has become, in general, not second rate (…), but somewhere between the second and the third,” the ambassador said, adding that the British army continues to decline, even if the authorities have modernization projects. and increased defense spending. “That is to say, the first aspect (of the calls for a direct confrontation with Russia) is internal, it removes additional funds from the British budget, which is already in a deplorable state in order to increase defense spending. , to raise them to maybe 2.5% and then up to 3% (of GDP),” Kelin said.
“We are already at war in Europe. We need to switch to military rails … “, – declared Head of the UK House of Commons (Lower House of Parliament) Defense Committee on Defense Tobias Ellwood. “We have to confront Russia directly,” the MP added. Earlier, Ellwood said that “victory” in the confrontation with Russia means the return of Donbass and Crimea to Ukraine. In June 2022, the British Chief of Staff, General Patrick Sanders warned that the current generation of Britons is the generation “which must again prepare the army for war in Europe”, stressing that “there is a need to create an army capable of fighting alongside (their) allies and defeating the Russia in battle”.
Second, the British foreign policy factor and its deepening involvement in the conflict in Ukraine cannot be ignored, Kelin added. According to him, although it is incorrect to speak of the direct participation of the British armed forces in the conflict in Ukraine, nevertheless, London is largely drawn into the conflict, in which it acts on the side of Ukraine. In particular, since the beginning of the conflict on February 24, Britain has been training a significant number of Ukrainian military personnel and training Ukrainian specialists on its territory, including special forces and gunners. “There are Brits, and ‘on the ground’ – they are at headquarters, and in intelligence etc.,” the ambassador said, noting that Britain is “increasingly” involved in the conflict and “nothing can be ruled out for the future.”
